Despite differing names and domain counts, nearly all share four underlying areas: planning and preparation, classroom environment, instruction, and professional responsibilities. Edves runs observation on whichever framework a district already uses rather than imposing its own.
The common structure
State frameworks look more different than they are. Strip the branding and almost all of them assess four things:
| Area | What it looks at |
|---|---|
| Planning and preparation | Knowledge of content and students, coherent instructional design, assessment design |
| Classroom environment | Culture, expectations, behavior management, use of physical space |
| Instruction | Communication, questioning and discussion, student engagement, use of assessment in instruction, responsiveness |
| Professional responsibilities | Reflection, records, family communication, professional community, growth |
This matters practically: a district changing frameworks does not need to rebuild its observation practice from nothing, and a platform that handles one well can handle the others.
The major frameworks
Danielson Framework for Teaching
The most widely used framework in the United States, either adopted directly or used as the basis for a state or district model. Four domains — planning and preparation, classroom environment, instruction, professional responsibilities — subdivided into components, each with performance levels. Its strength is the specificity of its component descriptors; its weakness in practice is that districts often observe all components in every observation, which produces shallow evidence across a wide surface rather than depth anywhere.
Marzano evaluation model
Organized around instructional strategies and their observable effect on student behavior, with a heavier emphasis on the causal link between a teacher action and a visible student response. Adopted in numerous districts and several state systems.
State frameworks
| State | Framework |
|---|---|
| Texas | T-TESS — Texas Teacher Evaluation and Support System |
| Georgia | TKES — Teacher Keys Effectiveness System |
| Tennessee | TEAM — Tennessee Educator Acceleration Model |
| New York | APPR — Annual Professional Performance Review |
| Ohio | OTES — Ohio Teacher Evaluation System |
| Louisiana | Compass |
| Nevada | NEPF — Nevada Educator Performance Framework |
| Washington | TPEP — Teacher and Principal Evaluation Program |
| Illinois | PERA — Performance Evaluation Reform Act |
| Connecticut | SEED |
| Delaware | DPAS-II |
| New Jersey | AchieveNJ |
| New Mexico | NMTEACH |
| Indiana | RISE |
| Arkansas | TESS — Teacher Excellence and Support System |
| Mississippi | M-STAR |
| Oklahoma | TLE — Teacher and Leader Effectiveness |
| North Carolina | NCEES |
| Kansas | KEEP |
| Kentucky | PGES |
| Colorado | LEAP |
| Utah | UTES |
| Alabama | PEPE |
| Florida | FEAP — Florida Educator Accomplished Practices |
| South Carolina | SC Teaching Standards 4.0 |
| California, Alaska, Nebraska | District-based models |
Frameworks and their weightings change with state legislation and rule-making. Confirm current requirements with your state education agency; the full state-by-state view is on all 50 states.
What separates a working system from a compliance exercise
Framework choice matters far less than four implementation decisions.
- Evidence requirements. If a rating can be recorded without citing what happened in the room, the instrument will drift toward the middle and stop discriminating.
- Observer calibration. If two assistant principals score the same lesson differently, the framework is not the problem. Calibration is the highest-return activity in most district evaluation systems and the most commonly skipped.
- Frequency and length. Ten short walkthroughs across a year produce a trend and a working coaching relationship. One annual formal observation produces an artifact.
- Separation of development from employment decisions. Teachers behave differently in observations that feel developmental. Districts that blur the two get performances, not lessons.
How Edves handles frameworks
Edves loads the framework a district already uses rather than imposing a rubric. Ratings require attached evidence, hedged feedback language is flagged for replacement with specific actions, coaching resources link to the specific component scored, the teacher holds a documented right of reply, and scoring variance between observers is surfaced so calibration can be managed rather than assumed.
Detail: Teaching Observation with AI.